SINGAPORE – Housing may be one of the most clamorous issues in Singapore, but despite recurring calls for the Government to curb runaway prices for young couples buying their first flat, it has arguably not intervened aggressively enough.

This is because it cannot, without affecting the nest eggs of the vast majority of older home owners, according to sociologist Chua Beng Huat’s new book. He argues that the contradiction of Housing Board (HDB) flats as both public good and financial asset lies at the heart of an increasingly intricate balancing act for the Government, which cannot afford to let the value of flats plummet after so much of its citizens’ savings have been sunk into their home purchase.

Help for new entrants is limited mostly to “temporary and mild” cooling measures and perpetual cash grants, “a strategy with no potential endpoint”, he writes in Public Subsidy/Private Accumulation: The Political Economy Of Singapore’s Public Housing, published in 2024.

The thrust of his book ties the HDB system with the political legitimacy it confers on the incumbent Government. Chua says this makes radical reform not only “practically impossible”, but also “conceptually inconceivable”.

Frustrations over housing have cost the People’s Action Party votes in the past, from the defeat at the 1981 Anson by-election to the losses it sustained in the 2011 General Election, when skyrocketing flat prices were attributed to an influx of new residents, he says.

“For the amount of subsidies that the Government has given, it has actually received a huge political return,” says Chua, 78, currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, at the National University of Singapore (NUS), in an interview with The Straits Times.

“There’s quite a lot of gratitude about being able to own a flat. The HDB remains synonymous with the People’s Action Party-led Government.”

Might the record number of million-dollar flats resold recently mean housing will be politicised in the upcoming general election? He thinks not, though it would have been more touchy a year ago.

“It depends on whether the opposition parties could make it an issue, but the Government has done a lot to reduce waiting time since Covid-19 and there have been cooling measures.”

In general, “we actually have been...